Some Fantastic
by WitchGirl
Summary: Someone creates a list of wacky ideas that take on a life of their own and ride a paper airplane right into Nick's office.  This is their story.  Nick/Greg.


Some Fantastic

**Summary**: Someone creates a list of wacky ideas that take on a life of their own and ride a paper airplane right into Nick's office. This is their story. Nick/Greg.

_**Author's**_** Note:** This fic is inspired by and named for"Some Fantastic" by Barenaked Ladies. If you're interested in following my work on LiveJournal, including fan fiction, videos, icons and more, please feel free to check me out at smilesinc[dot]livejournal[dot]com. I'm currently adding new friends. **Update:** 11/28/11 - Reposted with edits and literally new ideas.

_There's a lot I'll never do,  
>Some fantastic, I know it's true,<br>But not as much as my want to be with you._

- Barenaked Ladies

It was a very late night, and everyone in the nightshift were preparing to head home. Perhaps the thing that was working the hardest at such a late hour was a flimsy piece of primitive aerial technology that was floating around the lab. It only lived for about half an hour. It had begun its incredibly short but meaningful life as nothing more than a blank piece of clean white printer paper. Someone had snatched it out of the outbox on Nick Stokes' desk when he noticed that there was nothing on it. Deciding that this was a tragedy that needed to be rectified (no piece of paper should be blank for long), the paper thief madly scribbled a few ideas across its surface. The ideas morphed and crawled sideways down the page, inserted themselves between lines of already written ideas, and hid in the corners, scrunching up as small as they could be so they fit. The ideas all orbited one central Big Idea, which was the first thought the paper thief had written down. All other ideas sprang from this single seed and flourished as they tangoed across the page.

A few of the ideas that sang and wiggled on the paper included the following:

_Camp in an empty swimming pool_ was curled around _Bake peach cobbler for the entire United Nations_.

_Build a time machine_ was squished in between _Meet Gandhi _and _Save Archduke Ferdinand and stop World War I from starting_.

_Create an alter ego_ and _Buy glasses and my own personal phone booth _branched off of _Get exposed to nuclear radiation and develop superpowers._

_Invent a translation software for dogs and babies_ bumped right up against _Win American Idol_. The footnote _discover planet cats came from_ was scribbled in the bottom right corner.

And all of these ideas were absolutely ecstatic to be exorcised from their thinker's head and jump and bumble around and hobnob with other crazy ideas on this white plane of existence. Once the author had written every idea clamoring around in his brain, he kept them safe by folding the corners of the page down and creating something brand new. The paper, once a simple, two dimensional object in space, suddenly sprouted a third dimension like a daisy in the spring. It had crisp, razor-sharp wings, balanced with the ink of his thoughts on either side of it. The nose was triangular and haughty as it turned upward to the sky. Smiling¸ the author aimed for the door of the break room and sent his creation out into the world.

For a while, the little airplane really thought it could fly. With its cabin filled with chattering idea passengers buzzing suggestions into his head about bungee jumping off of the Burj Khalifa, climbing Olympus Mons and swimming the English Channel, it was brimming with ambition. It wanted to do and see everything. The author had exorcised the ideas that had haunted him onto the page, and the plane was glad to inherit them. And for a while, it mistook gracefully floating downwards on the currents of gravity for flying with strong tailwinds. But it hit the ground hard and fast, and was soon kicked away by the busy people in the hall, desperate to get home and away from the business of death. It lay there, forgotten, for a long while, but the ideas continued to giggle and gossip and the plane did not lose hope.

And then, a janitor stopped and looked at the airplane a moment. About to sweep it into his dustbin, he had a memory of his childhood, when he was sick with the chicken pox. The apartment he'd shared with his single mother had been on the top floor of a tall building in New York City. With no television, and having blasted through all his comic books, the boy had busied himself by innovating new ways to make paper airplanes and launching them out his window and into the vast city below, always wondering and never quite knowing where they had landed. Always dreaming that one of his designs must have found a way to defy gravity and fall upwards, into the stars, and maybe even land on the moon. Even today, his rational adult self still liked to fantasize that there was a little piece of him nestled snugly in Armstrong's footprint.

It was for this reason that the old janitor, nostalgic for his youth, took pity on the old paper plane and launched it back into the blue-gray sky of the Las Vegas Crime Lab with the triumphant smile of an itchy, pockmarked little boy, unintentionally sending it in the direction of the trace lab. For a few more glorious moments, the plane believed that it could soar, as if it were filled with tiny engines and an endless amount of jet fuel. But unfortunately, it was running on the momentum of ideas, and while inspiring, ideas are a notoriously bad source of energy. In fact, one playful but wicked idea can sap so much energy from a person that he risks spending his whole life chasing after that single, sly and impossible idea.

Inevitably, the plane crashed again in a dramatic dive, stubbing its nose painfully on the shoe of a technician. Its nose wrinkled up like an accordion and it rested there a moment in the dust by the cabinet.

"What's this?" asked a visiting technician, stooping down to pick it up. She held it up to her wide brown eyes and examined it. "Did you make this?"

David Hodges, the owner of the shoe upon which the plane had broken its nose, shook his head. "Never seen it before in my life. What do you want?"

"There's writing on it," said his colleague, Wendy, who tenderly mended the poor paper plane's nose as best she could. "_Train my own army of ninja turtles_. Are you _sure_ you didn't write this?"

Intrigued, Hodges snatched the plane from Wendy and read something on its wing. "_Discover a new element_. Already did that. I call it Hodgesonium." He handed the plane back to Wendy.

"That's not a real element," she said.

"You don't know that," Hodges said. "It was super radioactive, so the government decided it was best that nobody know about it."

"Mm hm," Wendy intoned, amused but clearly unimpressed. She threw the airplane at his head and it was more than happy to play guided missile. It imagined it had the teeth of a shark painted onto its nose and screamed like a kamikaze pilot as it impaled itself right between the eyes of the trace technician.

"OK, so I'm joking," Hodges confessed as he crouched to pick up the airplane. "No, I didn't write this. Looks like someone's bucket list."

"Some impossible things on here," Wendy said looking at a few more.

Hodges disagreed. "Not impossible. Just… fantastic. Creative."

"You want your own army of ninja turtles, don't you?" Wendy teased, astutely.

"Doesn't everybody?" Hodges asked.

"Look at this one," Wendy said. "_Learn Cantonese. Then, teach Cantonese to Mandarin speakers. Then, learn Mandarin._"

"Got that one a little backwards, huh?" Hodges said.

"I think it's someone's list of wishes," Wendy said, a warm and fuzzy tone to her voice that made Hodges make a disgusted face. Seeing this, Wendy stuck out her tongue at him, then launched the little paper plane back into the air, where it caught a gust of current from the air vents and made it several feet into the hall, coming to a gentle landing just outside of Catherine Willows' office as its belly skidded across the floor.

The door opened, and a woman that wasn't Catherine Willows stepped right on the paper, leaving a unique boot print pattern behind that the paper plane wore proudly as a tattoo. She crouched down, feeling somewhat guilty for stepping on what must be someone's paperwork. When she noticed it was handwritten, her curiosity was piqued. She examined the aircraft and went one step further than Wendy and Hodges. She decided to unfold the plane, and transform it once again into a two dimensional object, with ideas bouncing around on the page like tennis balls. In unfolding the paper, she revealed its hidden gooey center across the crease in the middle. A quiet glee tugged hard at the edge of her lips several times as she listened to the ideas sing to her, until the amusement finally won out and she burst into a full-out grin. Looking around, she folded the paper into a plane again and smoothed out the nose and wings so it could fly one more time. She walked a few paces until she found the person she was searching for in his office, hiding behind a stack of paperwork.

"It's almost sunrise," she reminded him.

He looked up and moved a stack of papers to see her better. "'Mornin', sunshine."

She rolled her eyes at the old nickname. "What are you doing here so late?" Nick gestured at the paperwork and she laughed. She held up the airplane. "Got one more for you."

"Aw, Sara, I'm swamped as it is…"

"Really," she insisted. "Stop working so hard. Even Catherine's gone. I was just in her office dropping off my report on the case I closed today. I'm about to head out. Other than Hodges and Wendy, who for some reason like to linger late in the lab together after both their shifts have ended, you'll be the only one left."

"It ain't too late until dayshift starts trickling in," Nick insisted, moving on to his next stack. "Besides, this comes with the job."

"Assistant supervisor…" Sara said, tasting the title on her lips. She shrugged and stuck out her tongue. "Better you than me." She tossed the airplane, and it made one grand voyage across the vast expanse of Nick's office to land squarely on his desk. He looked at it, then up at Sara.

"Seriously?"

She winked at him. "Seriously. G'night." She started to leave, then paused. "Oh, and by the way… I think I saw Greg still in the locker room." And then, she was gone.

Nick had no idea why he was supposed to care where Greg was. He pushed the tiny airplane off to the side and continued in his quest to get rid of all the paperwork he'd been avoiding by morning. After a few more dull dates and signatures, his eyes meandered over to the airplane that sat on his desk. The scribbled words across the entire surface of the plane toyed with his interest like a yarn ball taunts a cat. Eventually, Nick knew, he was going to have to read it. Better now than later.

His hand reached up and pawed experimentally at the plane before unfolding it to read every last idea on that piece of paper. _Discover the medicinal purposes of jelly beans. Have a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named after me. Walk across the country from Seattle to Miami. Develop telekinetic powers._

Each new ridiculous idea lit a different candle somewhere in his chest until his entire torso was engulfed in warmth. Eventually, as his eyes spiraled towards the gravitational center of the piece, all of the candles were extinguished.

Written in a circle, like a tiny planet, were the words, _Do all these things. Then, tell Nick Stokes I love him_.

This wasn't the case of a secret admirer, or an overheard phone conversation where he didn't have all the information. The handwriting and, moreover, the ideas themselves told Nick exactly who had written that list just as effectively as if the author had signed it a million times over. Nick neatly folded the paper back into a plane and stared at the paperwork on his desk. He drummed his fingers against the leather surface of his writing pad twice. The paper plane lay there right in front of him, idle. He licked his lips. The paper plane lay there, mocking him. He narrowed his eyes and swallowed the lump in his throat. The paper plane lay there, daring him.

After a moment, Nick kicked his chair back and seized the plane before marching out of his office and down the hall, holding it hostage in his grip.

He found Greg right where Sara had said he would be, tying his shoe on the bench. The younger man glanced up and blinked innocently at his friend in the doorway.

"Hey."

Nick said nothing in reply. His mouth was dry. He wasn't sure he _could_ speak. He licked his lips, then rubbed his fingers together with the wrinkled, inky paper of the plane between them. Without warning, he raised his hand and launched the plane at Greg. It landed, as it was intended to, right by his knee on the bench. Greg picked it up and examined it, then turned to Nick, his eyes wide with the question, but otherwise inscrutable.

The two men stood there for a moment, sharing the air and the silence in the chasm between them. Instinctively, they both moved at the same time. Greg rose to his feet, one shoe still untied, and Nick took three steps to close the gap between them. They met in the middle, and their lips crashed together like waves on the sand, earth and sea colliding in a cataclysmic and desperate roar to connect with each other, to become each other, sand breaking off into ocean, water licking the curves of the shore and leaving pools of itself behind inside pockets of the land. They withdrew, and returned, and withdrew and returned, always returning to each other. And like the tide, it was an action that would be repeated, day after day after day.

The paper plane was knocked to the floor in their hurry to connect. It was kicked under the locker as Nick slammed Greg up against the rattling metal. It hid with the dust mites and silverfish, with all of its fantastic ideas, and it would eventually crumble and be forgotten, and the lockers would become its gravestone. But it was content, for while it didn't fly to England or Dubai or Mars, it did, in its short, brief lifetime, achieve something fantastic.


End file.
